]]>Why work? That’s what Coraline asks me. To be fair, she also asks, Why pee? Why hot? Why cook? Why this? Why…why…why? Yep, we’ve entered into the age of Why, which is great. I ask why questions too: Why do kids ask why? I think I have an answer for that. Everyone attributes it to curiosity, which I don’t disagree with, but I think it starts out as something slightly different. At first, kids ask why simply because it elicits a response. It feels, to them, like a conversation even when they don’t have enough words to actually maintain a conversation. This can be really frustrating because Coraline usually doesn’t even listen to the response, so half the time we just say, “Monkeys” and she moves right along.

But when exactly will it switch from a seemingly meaningless call and response to full blown, legitimate curiosity? When will she really start listening to the answers and understanding them? I don’t want to miss that transition and kill her curiosity and eagerness for exploration by telling her “Monkeys.” So I’m trying to answer her questions honestly and thoughtfully. Sometimes that means trying to explain complex things using only words a two year old knows. Sometimes it means using complex words and ideas, knowing she won’t understand but that she’ll begin to understand the more she hears it. And I know she’ll ask again, and again, and again.

I don’t want to tell Coraline that I work to make money, although it seems like an easy enough answer. Sunny and I are putting together a plan for how to teach Coraline and Mazlo about money, but right now I want her to see the world without the money filter. That filter will come soon enough, and we hope to teach her to recognize life’s beauty even after she’s forced to view it through the filter. When Coraline asks, “Why work?” I start asking myself Why questions as well. Why do we have money? Why do we have jobs? Both are social constructs invented by humans to create order. We’ve invented this whole structure, this economy, if you will, and I wonder what work would look like if it weren’t based on money and punching a clock. The work would still need to get done. We would still do it even if we weren’t getting paid. So why work, then? Maybe that’s…what’s the opposite of cynical? Childish?

I work at Trader Joe’s, in case you’re new to this blog and didn’t already know that, so what I tell Coraline is that I put food on the shelves so that people can come get the food and take it home. I feed people. Sometimes I talk about the food we donate to people in need. Sometimes I go into detail about the trucks that deliver the food and the pallets I break down. And sometimes I just say “Eat.” Because when I turn it around and ask her why I go to work, that’s what she says. I’m not sure if she’s taking all the details into consideration and boiling it down to people getting food so they can take it home and eat it or if she’s simply thinking about getting a sample from the demo station, but I think her curiosity is developing. But that’s why I work: to feed people.

I’ve always been a fairly inquisitive person. I’ve asked why when everyone else has just gone with the flow. Not that I’ve always been bright enough to ask why at the right times. There are people asking why to things I’ve never thought to question. Now I ask why every single time I make a purchase. Why buy a new car? Why go out to eat? Why buy that candy bar they placed in front of you at the checkout line? And sometimes the answer is what Coraline normally says: Fun. Because it’s important to still have fun. But sometimes the answer is that spending that extra dollar now means working longer later when I could be home with my family. Or better yet, going on adventures with my family.

]]>http://www.theminiwonders.com/why-work/feed/0Mother’s Dayhttp://www.theminiwonders.com/mothers-day/
http://www.theminiwonders.com/mothers-day/#commentsSun, 08 May 2016 12:54:55 +0000http://www.theminiwonders.com/?p=513It’s difficult to know which actions or phrases you do or say will have lasting impacts on your children. Some small thing that you don’t even think about could resonate with your kids for their entire lives. I’m lucky right now. Our oldest isn’t three yet. Pretty sure she won’t remember any specific things we […]

]]>It’s difficult to know which actions or phrases you do or say will have lasting impacts on your children. Some small thing that you don’t even think about could resonate with your kids for their entire lives. I’m lucky right now. Our oldest isn’t three yet. Pretty sure she won’t remember any specific things we say. But soon we’ll have to worry about that.

One of the phrases I think about a lot is something my mom said once. Only once. I don’t remember if she said it to me or if I overheard her telling it to someone else, but it’s had an incredible impact on my life. She said that she had to divorce my dad so that my brother and I didn’t see their relationship and think that’s what marriage is. She didn’t want to set a bad example for us. I think about that quite a lot. I love her so much whenever I think about that hard decision she made, or maybe it wasn’t hard at all once she put it into that context. But it was certainly work. She worked at McDonald’s to pay her way through nursing school so that she could start her nursing career working the night shift to pay the bills. My dad was laid off. She also belonged to a church that wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of divorce. Her sister hadn’t been treated well by the church for the same offense. But she did it, because she knew it was the best thing for me and my brother.

It did happen to be the best thing for her too. I remember going to family counseling. The waiting room had faux-wood walls. You know, like the 70s. But this was the early 90s. The counselor asked us to draw pictures about how we felt. My mom felt terrible when she realized we had to share them with each other. She’d drawn herself walking through the grass on a sunny, cheerful day. Because she was happy. For the first time in a long time. It was around that time that I recall riding in the car with her while she sang along to “I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone.” I’ve always paired these two memories together. In retrospect, that probably made me realize it was ok to be happy about it. As much as we worry about it and try to always do the best thing, we never really know what small thing will impact our children’s lives forever, positively or negatively.

Sunny and I have been happily married for over ten years. While I wouldn’t say we’ve never fought, I will say we’ve never fought about anything terribly important. We’ve always been on the same page about major decisions. When people say marriage is hard work, I don’t really know what they mean. I guess people also say if you love your job you’ll never work a day in your life. We’re probably really lucky to have found each other. But I’m also really damn lucky to have the mom I have. She didn’t have the opportunity to show me what a healthy marriage looks like first hand, but then maybe seeing an unhealthy marriage end makes a more powerful impact.

]]>http://www.theminiwonders.com/mothers-day/feed/1Three Areas to Tighten Your Budgethttp://www.theminiwonders.com/three-areas/
http://www.theminiwonders.com/three-areas/#respondThu, 28 Apr 2016 08:29:40 +0000http://www.theminiwonders.com/?p=505We are just about a third of the way through the year on this budget of ours, and we’ve learned a few things about reducing our spending. Some of it we’ve learned through failure: we’ve gone over our grocery budget by $1.49 and we still have three days left in the month. Here are the […]

]]>We are just about a third of the way through the year on this budget of ours, and we’ve learned a few things about reducing our spending. Some of it we’ve learned through failure: we’ve gone over our grocery budget by $1.49 and we still have three days left in the month. Here are the three areas we’ve pushed harder to tighten our budget. Maybe they can help you tighten your budget.

Step one is to not buy stuff. The best advice I can give about how to spend less money is to buy less stuff. Sounds simple, right? And it really is. Try this experiment next time you’re at the store and you feel like buying something: instead of buying that thing, don’t buy it. Just walk out. See how it feels. The first time you try this, it may not work. You may have to go back to the store later because it turns out you really did need that thing. Because maybe that thing was toilet paper. But if you try this experiment a few times, you may find that it works quite well, and you may take the next step: not going to the store at all. Check out how this idea worked out for us when we tried 60 Days of Buying Nothing. Spoiler alert: we failed.

Step two is all about groceries. I find that food is the easiest thing to control in the monthly budget. Scratch that. It’s the part of the budget that can get out of control the easiest, but that can be reigned in without too much blood, sweat and tears.. It’s not necessarily easy to just decide to stop spending as much money on food. We get into our habits. We grow accustomed to our lifestyles. But you simply put intention behind every purchase you make, you’ll find that you can save money. Imagine, if you will, that you actually couldn’t afford to waste food. If buying two loaves of bread meant one might go bad before you ate it, you might buy that second loaf later in the week. Or you might not buy it at all. Check out How to Save Money on Groceries in Three Easy Steps for some specifics that have helped us.

Step three is car insurance. What seems to be working well for us is switching to Metromile. Now we pay a low monthly fee plus a couple cents for each mile that we drive. It works out great, because we don’t drive that much, and it encourages us to drive even less. We ride our bikes instead. Even though I took a trip to the coast last month, in addition to all the normal driving, we still spent half what we’d been spending on car insurance. We only spent $65 last month. Metromile. Check it out. May not be your thing. But maybe it is. And what’s more, driving less means less money spent on gas and maintenance. My brother tracks every cent he puts into his car, from the initial cost to purchase, to maintenance, car insurance, gas and licensing fees. He also tracks his miles, and then he figures out how much he pays per mile. If you thought about how much it costs to drive to the store every time you drove to the store, you may consider biking, or walking, or taking a tip from step one and not going to the store at all.

Even though we’ve gone over our budget on groceries this month, and last month, and in fact we’ve gone over budget on two to six categories each month, we’re still under budget for the year. Under by $385. And even though we spent an unbudgeted $500 on passports for the whole family, we’re still under for this month by $50. We’re saving money in areas we didn’t expect even while we spend more than expected elsewhere.

]]>http://www.theminiwonders.com/three-areas/feed/0Workaholichttp://www.theminiwonders.com/workaholic/
http://www.theminiwonders.com/workaholic/#respondMon, 11 Apr 2016 08:00:05 +0000http://www.theminiwonders.com/?p=499A few weeks ago my brother called me. I was at work; he was at work. We both happened to be on break at the same time. Usually, if he tries to call me, I can’t answer. Then he hangs up and sends me a text message. It’s easier to communicate that way since we […]

]]>A few weeks ago my brother called me. I was at work; he was at work. We both happened to be on break at the same time. Usually, if he tries to call me, I can’t answer. Then he hangs up and sends me a text message. It’s easier to communicate that way since we both work so much and such varying hours. On this phone call, he wanted to ask me a question: Is he a workaholic. My response: maybe.

You may recall that my brother wrote a post a while back about the freelancer’s work week. He’s a freelancer. I bring this up because lately he’s been working 80 hours a week. So he’s banking some money for if/when the work dries up. Freelancers have to do this. But is he going too far? I guess that’s what he called me to ask. Maybe. Right?

Still, I work 50 hours a week. Can you believe that’s less than the average American? It can be really hard to work less when you have the opportunity to make money, because you may not have that opportunity later. There are plenty of unemployed and underemployed Americans out there. What if the work dries up and suddenly we wished we had worked more and saved more when we had the chance? No one ever says, on their deathbed, that they wish they’re worked more, right? But some people might say, as they’re getting evicted, or choosing between buying medicine or buying food, that they wish they’d worked more hours when there were hours to be worked.

It’s that fear that can turn us into workaholics. To be honest, I’ve never been much of a worrier. I’ve started worrying a little more since having kids, especially now that we’re a single income family. My income. But I spend just as much time worrying that I spend too much time at work and not enough time with the family. I certainly don’t want my kids to think I’m a workaholic.

]]>http://www.theminiwonders.com/workaholic/feed/0Decluttering: The Purge Continueshttp://www.theminiwonders.com/decluttering-purge-continues/
http://www.theminiwonders.com/decluttering-purge-continues/#respondFri, 08 Apr 2016 08:38:40 +0000http://www.theminiwonders.com/?p=493Living in a small space has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that there simply isn’t room to store needless things that we don’t constantly use. One disadvantage is that if we aren’t vigilant, clutter will quickly infiltrate our entire home. There’s no spare bedroom or basement to let all the clutter live; it lives right […]

]]>Living in a small space has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that there simply isn’t room to store needless things that we don’t constantly use. One disadvantage is that if we aren’t vigilant, clutter will quickly infiltrate our entire home. There’s no spare bedroom or basement to let all the clutter live; it lives right here with us. We’re constantly trying to find the balance between creating more nooks, crannies and cubbies to hide away all of our useful things and simply taking unnecessary things out of the home. Sometimes I dream of living in a big loft and having nothing in it but space.

We didn’t exactly choose to live in a small space, although we had already been researching tiny houses, and we did want to downsize. We had already decided to purge unnecessary things from our lives, but we weren’t necessarily interested in living in a one bedroom apartment. It just turns out that the best option for both being close to family and reducing our spending was this place. We weren’t looking for small, but we weren’t afraid of it either, so we jumped into the challenge and it’s been largely successful.

Now here we are, a year later. We’ve done a lot of work to the place to make it suitable for a family of four, and we’re not quite done yet. I have at least ten different projects in various stages of completion, and, unfortunately, that means there’s clutter sitting around from those different projects, as well as clutter from clothes the kids have outgrown or haven’t grown into yet, and just random things that we don’t want to spend time with because we just want to finish these projects or take a break from it to ride our bikes. In other words, our small space is full of clutter.

So we’ve resolved to declutter once again. Tools and materials for unfinished projects that won’t be completed any time soon will be put into the shed. The shed’s a mess, but one step at a time folks. Clothes that don’t currently fit the kids will be put into the shed or given away. Sunny and I will sort through our clothes and pare down the wardrobe. She’s figuring out a capsule wardrobe; I’m going to take on the challenge of Project 333. And I’ve decided that Thursday afternoons will be decluttering time, even though, in a way, that feels like a failure.

Every minimalist that I’ve read or listened to talks about how owning fewer things means spending less time taking care of those things. I’d like to believe that we’ve minimized enough that we don’t have to spend time organizing and decluttering. But I know, we still have two kids. And while we do have to work at it, I have to remember that there are parents out there that have entire rooms just for toys. It was just over a year ago that we had a constantly cluttered kitchen, a garbage filled garage, and a basement bursting with belongings. I know we’ve made progress. And needing to tidy up once a week isn’t bad.

Of course the best approach to decluttering is constant vigilance, and we do that too. But during my work week, I’m away from home over fifty hours, and Sunny is at home with two kids and working on her master’s degree. Throw in the sleep deprivation and the fact that our budget doesn’t allow us to pick up a pizza to avoid dirtying the dishes and the kitchen, and you’ve got yourself a cluttered house. So after work on Thursday, which is my Friday, we’ll declutter the house, so we can have a clutter-free weekend and start the week with a blank slate.

Where do I get the motivation for this? I’ve been listening to The Minimalists Podcast, I just finished reading Clutterfree with Kids, by Joshua Becker, and I’ve felt the effects of a clutterfree environment. It’s worth the work.

]]>http://www.theminiwonders.com/decluttering-purge-continues/feed/0My Dad Taught Me to Dreamhttp://www.theminiwonders.com/dad-taught-dream/
http://www.theminiwonders.com/dad-taught-dream/#commentsMon, 04 Apr 2016 13:16:38 +0000http://www.theminiwonders.com/?p=488My dad taught me to dream. All my life, for as long as I can remember, he talked about getting rich. “Soon we’ll have more money than we’ll know what to do with,” he’d say. “I was born to be rich,” was another one. He was always trying to get rich without working too hard. […]

]]>My dad taught me to dream. All my life, for as long as I can remember, he talked about getting rich. “Soon we’ll have more money than we’ll know what to do with,” he’d say. “I was born to be rich,” was another one. He was always trying to get rich without working too hard. My dad invented the Flowbee. Or, at least, he created a homemade version of it right around the same time someone else patented the idea. He used to tell me that the guy who decided to put the striker on the back of the matchbook made a lot of money. More money than the guy who invented the matchbook in the first place. I don’t know if that’s true.

My dad never patented anything, but he had skill. He could fix any car. “If I can’t fix it, it ain’t broke.” He’d keep the crappyest piece of crap car running for years after most people would have put it out of its misery. But he talked about the fancy car he was going to have one day. He was always taking us to look at expensive cars, on Sundays, when the dealerships were closed so the salespeople wouldn’t bother us. They never bothered us anyway. “We aren’t dressed nice enough,” he’d say.

My dad always had a goal he was working on. Even right now, though he’s a little more subdued since his stroke, he’s still working to get out of assisted living and into his own apartment. We aren’t so sure that’s the best thing for him, but it’s good to have something to work toward. From him I learned to always dream and work for something bigger and better. I’m thankful that he taught me this. Like my dad, I live in the future, in the what-could-be and the what-will-be. But I had to learn through books and blogs and personal experiences that the bigger, better thing isn’t more money and more stuff and then more money to replace that stuff with better, updated stuff. The bigger, better thing isn’t that concrete.

Now I want to teach my children what I learned from my dad, to dream for something great and work toward it, as well as what I learned on my own, that something greater is a better life, time well spent, money not wasted. Hopefully with those two things under their belts they’ll be able to learn a new thing that I don’t know about. And so each generation will grow.

]]>http://www.theminiwonders.com/dad-taught-dream/feed/1Going Over the Budgethttp://www.theminiwonders.com/goingoverthebudget/
http://www.theminiwonders.com/goingoverthebudget/#respondFri, 01 Apr 2016 08:01:58 +0000http://www.theminiwonders.com/?p=481When I say Going Over the Budget, I don’t mean Let’s Do the Numbers. I mean we’ve spent too much money. Oops. Our monthly goal is $2383. We spent $2772. The good news is that since we were under budget in January and February, we’re still under budget for the year. But that’s not making […]

]]>When I say Going Over the Budget, I don’t mean Let’s Do the Numbers. I mean we’ve spent too much money. Oops. Our monthly goal is $2383. We spent $2772. The good news is that since we were under budget in January and February, we’re still under budget for the year. But that’s not making us feel much better. We now have less wiggle room for the rest of the year.

We went over our budget in six different categories!

Food: Mostly because we got a little lazy in our meal planning.

Utilities: We’ve gone over every month; guess we didn’t budget high enough.

Don’t worry about us though. We have a plan. Some of the things we spent money on this month are going to pay off. We bought a bicycle trailer so we can tow Coraline and Mazlo. This will be great for adventures, once we get our legs back in shape. But it will also be great because we can, hopefully, drive a little less. Most of our driving is nonnegotiable: me to work, Sunny to her mom’s, roadtrips. I’m talking about shortish day trips. We can’t generally bike instead of driving for these. However, we do make trips to the grocery store and the library. And, with a little planning around nap schedules, we can bike for those trips.

Here’s even better news to go along with that: we’re saving money on car insurance. By switching to Metromile, we’re cutting our monthly bill in half. Metromile is this new deal where you pay for car insurance based on the number of miles you drive. This is great because it will be just a little more encouragement to bike instead of drive. I’m pretty excited about this right now. We should save more than enough money in the next nine months to cover the cost of the trailer, and if we hadn’t bought that, we would have been under budget. I think it was a good investment.

]]>http://www.theminiwonders.com/goingoverthebudget/feed/0Airbnb Tiny House: Updatehttp://www.theminiwonders.com/airbnb-tiny-house-update/
http://www.theminiwonders.com/airbnb-tiny-house-update/#respondMon, 28 Mar 2016 08:00:54 +0000http://www.theminiwonders.com/?p=476After a couple of years of dreaming about building and living in our own tiny house, trying to figure out floor plans that maximize space so we can fit two kids, two dogs and a cat, we finally had the opportunity to stay in an Airbnb tiny house for a couple of nights. The Bayside […]

]]>After a couple of years of dreaming about building and living in our own tiny house, trying to figure out floor plans that maximize space so we can fit two kids, two dogs and a cat, we finally had the opportunity to stay in an Airbnb tiny house for a couple of nights. The Bayside Bungalow Tiny House. So now we know the answer to the question: Can we fit in a tiny house? No. It’s just a little too small for us. We are currently living in a pretty small space. Really, the only difference between where we’re living now and a tiny house is four and a half feet of width. But that’s kind of a lot.

Last summer, unbeknownst to Sunny, I started checking Airbnb for an interesting and unique vacation rental to celebrate our ten year anniversary. TEN YEARS! Crazy. Staying in a tiny house was at the top of my list, but I also checked out tree houses, boat houses, a yacht, fire lookouts, lighthouses, and other things I don’t recall. I looked all over the world, because afterall, we’re celebrating TEN YEARS! Turns out, there was a tiny house just two hours from home, which worked out well with a four-month-old baby tagging along.

Quick note: because I booked and paid for this last year, you won’t see it added to our budget. We’re sneaky.

It was great to get away from home, to have some time away from Coraline so we could give Mazlo some extra attention (although we missed Coraline, of course), and to check out a tiny house. Brittany built her tiny house a few years ago, before it became popular, and before there were so many options and ideas for building. She was one of the pioneers. And it’s cozy, and in a great location on her parents’ property, who are also delightful people. You should definitely consider staying there if you like tiny houses or fun getaways. You don’t even need to bring your own tape measure. There’s one provided. I measured a lot of things.

But what we really learned is that tiny house living probably isn’t right for us right now. It’s not something we could sustain long term, but it’s still fun to dream, and maybe some day we’ll figure out how to make it work.

]]>http://www.theminiwonders.com/airbnb-tiny-house-update/feed/0Airbnb Tiny Househttp://www.theminiwonders.com/airbnb-tiny-house/
http://www.theminiwonders.com/airbnb-tiny-house/#respondFri, 25 Mar 2016 17:44:27 +0000http://www.theminiwonders.com/?p=470We are just about to embark on our first Airbnb Tiny House adventure. There will be terrible cell phone and wifi reception. We’re bringing books and a baby. We’re toddler free this weekend. There will be naps. There will be drinking wine by the fire. There will be sleeping in. Stay tuned to hear about […]

]]>We are just about to embark on our first Airbnb Tiny House adventure. There will be terrible cell phone and wifi reception. We’re bringing books and a baby. We’re toddler free this weekend. There will be naps. There will be drinking wine by the fire. There will be sleeping in. Stay tuned to hear about it on Monday.

]]>http://www.theminiwonders.com/airbnb-tiny-house/feed/0Budgeting for Bankruptcyhttp://www.theminiwonders.com/budgeting-for-bankruptcy/
http://www.theminiwonders.com/budgeting-for-bankruptcy/#respondMon, 21 Mar 2016 07:29:15 +0000http://www.theminiwonders.com/?p=468Due to a series of unfortunate events, my dad is filing for bankruptcy, and when you file for bankruptcy in Washington state, you have to take an online course that teaches you a little about budgeting, getting out of debt, saving. How to avoid bankruptcy in the future. One of the unfortunate events in the […]

]]>Due to a series of unfortunate events, my dad is filing for bankruptcy, and when you file for bankruptcy in Washington state, you have to take an online course that teaches you a little about budgeting, getting out of debt, saving. How to avoid bankruptcy in the future. One of the unfortunate events in the series is that my dad had a stroke a couple years ago, so he needed a little help with his course. This means that I now know about budgeting for bankruptcy filers.

The most interesting thing I learned is that they suggest you budget 16% of your expenses for food. That’s super low. If we were budgeting 16% of our $28,600 goal for the year, we’d only spend $381 per month on food. That is achievable. We’ve achieved it. In January we only spent $375 on food. So it can be done. But it still seems crazy low, doesn’t it? The USDA thinks that a family of four, following a “thrifty” budget spends $584 per month. The poverty line is set at three times the cost of food. If 33% of our expenses went toward food, we’d be spending $794 per month on food. That’s super high, and it wouldn’t leave enough money for other important things.

My friends over at LivinLightly set their grocery budget at $300. And they’re a family of four. They’re pretty inspiring.

I see groceries as the main expense in the budget that isn’t fixed. Sure, housing costs more, but there’s less wiggle room with that month to month. There seems to be a pretty big disconnect among what government agencies think we should spend on food and what we actually spend on food. Maybe if we could all agree on that we’d be a little closer to solving hunger problems here. For now, we’re sticking with our $500/month budget, hoping to continue to come in closer to $400, and striving to some day meet that $300 mark that our friends at LivinLightly have achieved.